The opinion of Duncan Russell

You moved to the Netherlands from London in 2012 to work for international financial services company NN Group. What did you expect when you came to the Netherlands?

‘My family and I moved full time to the Netherlands in 2012. We had a young child at the time. It was a quite significant move for us, for two reasons. One was professionally - I wanted to move into the industry, so to speak, as opposed to working in banking. And the other was personal. We were living in London and we fancied a change, and we thought the Netherlands would be quite a nice place to be. Different, but not too different to the UK. We thought we would only stay for a couple of years, and here I am today - still working here, although I now live in Wales!’

Whereabouts did you settle in the Netherlands to start with?

‘We lived in Amsterdam, which is pretty much where a lot of expats go when they initially come to the Netherlands. We lived on the top floor of a very large house, and the stairs were incredibly steep - which was a bit of a tricky one when we had a pram. And then when my wife was pregnant, she simply couldn't get up and down the stairs. So then we moved to Museumplein district and we lived on the bottom floor. Eventually, we moved to a completely modern, purpose built flat.’

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